Use Tables!

So I’m home a day late because United Airlines delayed my UA934 flight from LAX to LHR by 20 hours. So instead of leaving at 17.02 PDT on saturday, I left at 13.00 PDT on sunday. I was supposed to leave at noon, but the plane was delayed a bit longer that day. So United gave me vouchers for a hotel, transportation to and from the hotel, and dinner/breakfast vouchers. Because of the 1 hour delay I missed my scheduled flight (8.25 GMT+1) at LHR to AMS (though just barely) and had to get the next one (10.40 GMT+1).

As far as backlog is concerned: I realize this probably doesn’t measure up to what other people get, and that part of the messages are there due to the fact that I did actually use email while away, but here’s some frightening statistics on what Thunderbird reported when I turned on my home desktop computer today. (Thunderbird is my email program of choice. I use it to get copies of everything that hits my 2 gmail accounts and an old account at my parents’ ISP. While on the move, I use my laptop and gmail’s web access to stay on top of things)

Unread Mail: 297

Unread Blogposts: 88 (some duplication here, but not too much)

Unread Newsgroup posts: 347

I’ve kept on top of Facebook myself while away, and somewhat the same for bugmail, so that’s a large number of those emails gone out the window - still a lot of newsgroup posts though.

What scares me most is that I’m planning to leave for 6 or 7 weeks this summer - without email/internet access. So multiply the above by that… and you get an idea of what I’m worried about

I’ll write a more coherent post about my stay in the US and the CSUN conference later. Right now it’s time for sleep - I’ve been up for 24 hours by now.

Because bulleted lists rock:

• The Hilton is not for me. I’m struggling with the luxury nature of most things. For instance, this morning I wanted to have breakfast. Which of the four eating places inside the hotel should I use? Breakfast is not included in the night’s stay, so how does paying for that work? Is it a buffet or do I just get stuff from the waiters? It’s all solvable, and fortunately everyone there is paid to help even though I’m ignorant, but it’s annoying at times.
• “Public transport” is not part of the standard Southern California vocabulary. Getting around without a car and without spending a ridiculous amount of money on cabs is hard.
• “How are you, sir?” is the standard substitute for “How may I help you?”. This is confusing.
• Obesity is a real problem. After having breakfast, the ‘why’ for that is readily apparent as the continental breakfast I took was considered “a base” by the waiter, who told me at least 2 or 3 times I could get more stuff if I wanted to. I did not finish this “base” alone, though that admittedly might have something to do with my jet-lagginess and generally confused stomach.
• Chinese restaurants in the Netherlands should start being real Chinese restaurants, instead of serving all this stuff we call “Chinese” which is actually Indonesian/Malay (Babi Pangang, Nasi Goreng, Bami, etc.)
• Some stereotypes are not stereotypes, they’re simply true.

That will do for now. I’m off to see the Queen Mary.

One more thing - it amazes me, as it has for some time now, that as one travels to different places across the globe, every place has its own “colour scheme”. The easiest examples close to my home are the fact that brick houses make up most of the (nothern/middle) Netherlands, and once you cross the border to Belgium and France, the omnipresent red brickwork is replaced with grey/white plasterwork, the colours and fonts used on roadsigns change, the wildlife/trees are different… For some reason this and the different plants/nature/cars around mean the atmosphere changes. Perhaps this is what other people think “feeling on holiday” is all about, I’m not sure. I just find myself thinking, at times “gosh, this place is ugly” and then remembering I should really be thinking “gosh, this place is different“.